A Charles ll period brass lantern clock case, by Andrew Prim...

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Hammer

£380

Fees

A Charles ll period brass lantern clock case, by Andrew Prime, London, with a later chain driven fusee movement striking on a bell, the engraved dial signed 'Andrew Prime Londini Fecit' and 'WM 1671', decorated with flowers, chapter ring with engraved and black painted Roman numerals with half hours markers, steel hands, 15 by 15 by 36cm high, with winder.
Notes: Andrew Prime (1619-1710) was in the circle of pioneers involved in early English clockmaking. Born in 1619, he was the son of a Norwich weaver and apprenticed in 1632 to Abraham Boyce of the Blacksmiths’ Company and made free in 1641. Prime was closely associated with the Fromanteels, whose family also came from Norwich. He was made free of the Clockmakers’ in 1646 and, in the same year, Prime married Ahasuerus Fromanteel’s sister, Elizabeth. They had three children, the youngest of which, Abraham, worked for his father. Despite protestations, in 1674, Prime was made Assistant of the Clockmakers’, but never attended meetings and may have left London. Prime died in Norwich in 1710, having spent his later life there.